mpd 3.18 and FreeBSD 6.0

[jhall at vandaliamo.net]

> On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 03:52:40PM -0000, jhall at vandaliamo.net wrote:
> j> Recently, I tried to upgrade my firewall from FreeBSD 4.8 to 6.0 and
> from
> j> mpd 3.17 to mpd 3.18.
> j>
> j> Initially, everything works.  However, after a few hours (4 to 5) users
> j> start complaining about slow connection speeds, and eventually they are
> j> not able to connect to the Exchange server, or network drives shared
> over
> j> the WAN at all.  If I put the FreeBSD 4.8 server and mpd 3.17 back on
> j> line, everything will start working properly almost immediately.  To
> me,
> j> it sounds like a memory leak, or the operating system is running out of
> j> stack space.
> j>
> j> My network is configured in a star configuration.  5 offices connect to
> j> the corporate network using an mpd to mpd configuration.  The corporate
> j> office has a dedicated T-1 and the other offices all have DSL
> connections.
> j>
> j> Nothing out of the ordinary is showing up in the mpd logs.  And,
> nothing
> j> out of the ordinary is showing up in the syslog.
> j>
> j> In my mpd.conf file, I have 34 pptp connections defined, and at most 10
> j> are in use at one time.  The server is a Celeron processor with 128 MB
> of
> j> RAM.  And, during peak usage times, I am showing approximately 1% usage
> on
> j> the processor.
> j>
> j> If needed, I would be happy to post my configuration files and log
> files.
> j> I have checked the log files around the times users report problems,
> and
> j> do not see anything out of the ordinary (no dropped connections, new
> j> connections, missed replies, etc).  And, checking the T-1 usage at the
> j> time, approximately 500K of a full T-1 was in use.
> j>
> j> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
> I guess you are using PPTP, although this word is absent in your mail. mpd
> can support different protocols, so reporting what you are actually using
> is important.
>
> The PPTP protocol has a terrible idea - windowing, that degradates tunnel
> performance a lot. In FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE ng_pptpgre(4) didn't support
> windowing at all. In modern FreeBSD ng_pptpgre(4) supports windowing. In
> mpd windowing is turned on by default. This is done because some modern
> MS Windows versions will refuse to connect if windowing is disabled. I
> think, that if you disable windowing in mpd config, your performance will
> come back.
>
> --
> Totus tuus, Glebius.
> GLEBIUS-RIPN GLEB-RIPE
>

Yes, you are correct, I am using PPTP and I should have specified that in
my initial e-mail.  Since I am using FreeBSD with mpd at both ends of the
link is preferred to disable windowing on the client side, or the server
side?  If possible, I would prefer to disable it on the client side since
I have several Windows users who also connect to this server.

Thanks for all your help.



Jay